Enquiries we have noticed. Paths we intend to pursue.
As we continue to stay with Ram Katha, some questions return, some patterns grow more visible, and some directions ask for study beyond the work in which they first appeared.
Three aspects of how these future works came into view and what their presence here means.
These are questions and directions that have emerged while staying with Ram Katha. They are places where there seems to be more to enquire into or learn from the text, without pretending that we already know where they lead.
Most emerged while working with Ram Katha - through an episode that left a question behind, a recurring pattern, a discomfort that asked us to look again, or a limitation in our own way of approaching the text. Our present understanding remains deliberately provisional.
Future Works is a changing roadmap, not a publication or production schedule. A work may grow, change direction, be deferred or go no further. Inclusion here commits us to serious enquiry, not to a predetermined outcome.
These future works are questions and directions that have emerged while staying with Ram Katha. Some have returned across different episodes, characters or circumstances; some have grown from choices we made while presenting the text; and some have arisen from questions about our own manner of listening and working.
We do not see them simply as subjects for future content. They are places where there seems to be more to stay with, enquire into, or learn from the text. A question encountered in one episode may return elsewhere; something noticed within a series may begin to exceed that series; the work itself may ask us to examine the posture, vocabulary or framework with which we approached it.
Putting them on our future roadmap allows unfinished questions to remain visible without pretending that we already know where they lead. They are worthy of further study; they are not conclusions, series or content before their time.
These future works did not come from preparing a list of subjects Sacred Threads should cover next. Most emerged while working with Ram Katha - through an episode that left a question behind, a pattern that appeared again, a discomfort that asked us to look again, or a limitation in our own way of approaching what we were reading.
Some came through accumulation. Yuddha aur Maryada, for example, has been taking shape through different moments in the Yuddha Kanda, rather than from beginning with a definition of what maryada in war ought to be. Women in Ram Katha, Siblings in Ram Katha and Silent Keepers of Ram Katha similarly ask us to stay with relationships or presences across the Katha before arriving at conclusions about them.
Others came from examining our own manner of listening and working. Listening Framework and Postures and Maryada Taxonomy grew from trying to describe choices we were already making: from where were we listening, what were we allowing the text to do, what were we deliberately not doing, and could vocabulary help us notice these differences without becoming a system imposed upon the text?
Our present understanding is deliberately provisional. We know enough to recognise a direction and some of the encounters that brought us there. Sustained study may change the question, unsettle a category, bring two directions together or divide one into several.
What appears here is our understanding at the point at which a future work became visible to us. We want to preserve that starting point and allow the work, when undertaken, to correct the question with which we began.
Future Works is our current roadmap of questions, directions and areas of study. It offers a glimpse of what has begun to draw our attention, why it seems worth staying with, and where our understanding presently stands.
The roadmap will change. Works may grow, change direction or form, be deferred or, after study, not be pursued further. New works may appear as new questions emerge.
Most importantly, Future Works is not a publication or production schedule. Inclusion here is a commitment we make to ourselves: to study a direction seriously enough before deciding what, if anything, should follow from it. A work may become a Sacred Threads series, a longer Study on this website, take another form, or go no further.
We are committing to the enquiry, not its outcome.
The briefs here are therefore not conclusions. They record the questions, encounters or patterns that made a work visible to us. The text and the enquiry must remain free to alter that starting understanding.
The roadmap tells us where we may walk next, not what we expect to find when we get there.
These future works are questions and directions that have emerged while staying with Ram Katha. Some have returned across different episodes, characters or circumstances; some have grown from choices we made while presenting the text; and some have arisen from questions about our own manner of listening and working.
We do not see them simply as subjects for future content. They are places where there seems to be more to stay with, enquire into, or learn from the text. A question encountered in one episode may return elsewhere; something noticed within a series may begin to exceed that series; the work itself may ask us to examine the posture, vocabulary or framework with which we approached it.
Putting them on our future roadmap allows unfinished questions to remain visible without pretending that we already know where they lead. They are worthy of further study; they are not conclusions, series or content before their time.
These future works did not come from preparing a list of subjects Sacred Threads should cover next. Most emerged while working with Ram Katha - through an episode that left a question behind, a pattern that appeared again, a discomfort that asked us to look again, or a limitation in our own way of approaching what we were reading.
Some came through accumulation. Yuddha aur Maryada, for example, has been taking shape through different moments in the Yuddha Kanda, rather than from beginning with a definition of what maryada in war ought to be. Women in Ram Katha, Siblings in Ram Katha and Silent Keepers of Ram Katha similarly ask us to stay with relationships or presences across the Katha before arriving at conclusions about them.
Others came from examining our own manner of listening and working. Listening Framework and Postures and Maryada Taxonomy grew from trying to describe choices we were already making: from where were we listening, what were we allowing the text to do, what were we deliberately not doing, and could vocabulary help us notice these differences without becoming a system imposed upon the text?
Our present understanding is deliberately provisional. We know enough to recognise a direction and some of the encounters that brought us there. Sustained study may change the question, unsettle a category, bring two directions together or divide one into several.
What appears here is our understanding at the point at which a future work became visible to us. We want to preserve that starting point and allow the work, when undertaken, to correct the question with which we began.
Future Works is our current roadmap of questions, directions and areas of study. It offers a glimpse of what has begun to draw our attention, why it seems worth staying with, and where our understanding presently stands.
The roadmap will change. Works may grow, change direction or form, be deferred or, after study, not be pursued further. New works may appear as new questions emerge.
Most importantly, Future Works is not a publication or production schedule. Inclusion here is a commitment we make to ourselves: to study a direction seriously enough before deciding what, if anything, should follow from it. A work may become a Sacred Threads series, a longer Study on this website, take another form, or go no further.
We are committing to the enquiry, not its outcome.
The briefs here are therefore not conclusions. They record the questions, encounters or patterns that made a work visible to us. The text and the enquiry must remain free to alter that starting understanding.
The roadmap tells us where we may walk next, not what we expect to find when we get there.
Some follow relationships or presences across the Katha; some grew increasingly visible while working on particular series; and some turn towards our own ways of listening, studying and describing what we encounter.
Our present roadmap includes works that have emerged from different kinds of encounters with Ram Katha. Their inclusion records our commitment to enquire seriously, not an assurance about what that enquiry will produce.
What might become visible if we stay with women across Ram Katha without first deciding what should connect them?
Can the pressures of war make forms of conduct and maryada visible in ways that ordinary circumstances do not?
What do places, rivers and relatively quiet presences hold as Ram Katha passes through and around them?
How can the threshold remain open for younger generations without deciding beforehand what their relationship with Ram Katha should become?
What becomes visible when sibling relationships are encountered within their own circumstances rather than measured against a single ideal?
Can the different ways of listening emerging through our work be described without turning them into a system that stands above the text?
Are there meaningful distinctions within what we call maryada, and can they emerge from textual encounters rather than being imposed upon them?
Women appear across Ram Katha in very different circumstances, relationships and positions. Our work has already brought us close to some of them individually, leaving us with a larger question: what might become visible if we stay with women across Ram Katha without first deciding what should connect them?
This enquiry does not begin with “women” as a single interpretive category, nor with a contemporary or traditional framework through which every woman must be understood. Sita, Kaushalya, Sumitra, Kaikeyi, Manthara, Tara, Mandodari, Trijata and others need not become instances of the same argument. Their circumstances, relationships, choices, speech, silences and places within the Katha may ask for different kinds of attention.
Our commitment is to study these encounters together and see what the text permits us to notice. The study may reveal relationships or distinctions we cannot presently see; it may also question connections with which we began.
Yuddha aur Maryada emerged while we were already working within war. As Yuddha ke Drishtikon progressed, particular moments repeatedly stopped us - not because we had begun with a question about the rules or ethics of war, but because conduct became unusually visible within the circumstances of war.
Shri Rama’s response when Sugriva suddenly engages Ravana in a duel; his instructions to Matali; Vibhishana’s reluctance to perform Ravana’s last rites and Shri Rama’s response, “ममाप्येष यथा तव”; the exchange between Vibhishana and Indrajit while Lakshmana already stands ready with his arrow - these and other encounters made the enquiry difficult to leave within individual episodes.
Our question is not what constitutes a righteous war, nor do we begin with a definition of maryada against which participants or actions can be measured. Our experience with Maryadit Ram has cautioned us against taking such a standard to the text. We want instead to stay with the circumstances of war and the conduct that becomes visible within them - between enemies, allies, kin, warriors, commanders and those facing death or its consequences.
War places relationships, choices and consequences under extraordinary pressure. Whether that allows us to understand something about maryada that is less visible under ordinary circumstances is for the study to examine, not for us to presume beforehand.
Silent Keepers of Ram Katha began with a simple observation: much of Ram Katha is held not only by those who act, speak or visibly move the narrative, but also by places, rivers and people whose presence quietly holds the Katha as it passes through them.
Ayodhya, Mithila, Chitrakuta, Panchavati, Kishkindha, Lanka, Suvela and Nikumbhila are not interchangeable settings. Rivers such as Sarayu, Ganga, Godavari, Tamasa and Mandakini remain present at crossings, departures, arrivals and periods of dwelling. Alongside named central figures are Kevat, Guha, gram vasi and the citizens of Ayodhya, Mithila and Lanka.
Our questions remain elementary: When does a place, river or community first appear? What does it witness? What happens there, around it or in its presence? When the Katha moves away, what has that presence held? Even the word keeper is something the study will have to earn.
“Silent” does not necessarily mean speechless, passive or unimportant. Some speak and some act. The silence we are noticing is closer to their relative quietness in the way Ram Katha is commonly remembered: they may hold part of the Katha without becoming its centre.
We do not yet know whether Silent Keepers will remain one enquiry, whether its three present directions - Places, Rivers and People - belong together, or whether study will ask us to reorganise or abandon the category.
They are rarely seen or spoken about. Yet they seem to hold the story first. When does that holding begin, and what does it witness?
Ram Katha and Gen Z & Later asks something different from how Ram Katha can be made relevant to younger generations. The Katha has travelled across generations long before us. Our enquiry concerns the encounter between Ram Katha and generations whose ways of learning, questioning, relating, communicating and inhabiting the world may be changing rapidly.
Our work with Bacchon ke Ram has made us cautious about deciding beforehand what another generation should receive from Ram Katha. Children did not need the Katha reduced to bal geet, morality lessons or simplified teachings; they could be given space to inhabit it. A related but larger question follows: what happens if we make room for younger generations to encounter Ram Katha without predetermining the relationship they ought to have with it?
We do not want to begin by assuming that younger generations need Ram Katha explained, modernised, defended or made relevant to them, nor by diagnosing a generation and redesigning the Katha accordingly. The enquiry may require us to listen beyond the text - to younger people themselves, their questions, and the forms in which they encounter inherited traditions.
The question is therefore not only how we might speak to them, but whether we first know how to listen to them.
As generations change, how can the threshold remain open without deciding for those who enter what their relationship with Ram Katha must become?
Siblings in Ram Katha began with noticing how differently sibling relationships are lived across the Katha. Shri Rama and his brothers, Sita and her sisters, Ravana and Kumbhakarna, Jatayu and Sampati, Vali and Sugriva, Nala and Neela bring us into very different circumstances.
Some siblings remain together; others are separated. Some relationships become places of support, service or shared responsibility; others encounter disagreement, rivalry, distance or conflict. Sometimes siblinghood becomes particularly visible precisely when two siblings do not make the same choice.
Our enquiry is not an attempt to identify an ideal sibling relationship and ask which pairs conform to it. Nor do we assume that Shri Rama and his brothers provide a template through which the others should be read. Each relationship first needs to be encountered within its own circumstances.
When does the text make siblinghood visible? What does being a sibling ask of someone in that circumstance? What happens when siblings differ in judgement, desire, responsibility or action? What remains through separation, disagreement, loss or consequence?
The study need not produce a common definition of siblinghood. It is equally acceptable if careful study shows us why these relationships should not be made to say the same thing.
This enquiry grew not from an attempt to create a framework for Ram Katha, but from looking back at how we had actually been listening to it. Across episodes and series, we noticed that we were not always standing in the same relationship with the text. Different beings, moments and circumstances seemed to ask for different ways of approaching and staying with them.
Postures emerged as a vocabulary for making some of those differences visible. They are not fixed categories into which characters or episodes must be placed, nor prescribed ways in which someone ought to listen. A posture describes a place from which listening became possible for us; another listener may enter the same encounter differently.
The Listening Framework is the larger enquiry within which these postures presently sit. It asks whether the approaches emerging through our work can be described coherently enough to help us - and perhaps others - recognise different ways of inhabiting Ram Katha, without turning them into a method that stands above the text.
Names may change. Two postures may turn out to be one; one may divide into several; some may cease to be useful; new ones may emerge. We do not yet know whether what we presently call a framework will ultimately deserve that name.
Our commitment is not to build and defend a system, but to study our acts of listening carefully enough to see whether a useful vocabulary and framework genuinely emerge from them. Whatever develops must remain beneath the text rather than becoming a structure through which the text is required to pass.
Maryada Taxonomy emerged from a difficulty we encountered while working with maryada: the same word seemed to become visible through very different circumstances, relationships and forms of conduct. In Maryadit Ram, rather than beginning with a definition of maryada and asking whether someone met that standard, we found ourselves studying the circumstances first and asking what made particular conduct feel maryadit within them.
A further question follows: are there meaningful distinctions within what we are calling maryada? Maryada within love may not become visible in the same way as maryada within separation, friendship, kinship, responsibility, conflict or war. Restraint, permission, responsibility, regard for another’s position, or conduct when one possesses greater power may sometimes appear related to maryada, but we do not yet know how - or whether - they belong together.
The word taxonomy is therefore provisional. We are not proposing predetermined types of maryada or a framework against which characters and actions can be judged. If distinctions are to be made, they must arise from sustained study of textual encounters.
The enquiry may challenge its own premise. We may discover recurring forms that can usefully be distinguished, considerable overlap between them, or that the text resists the classification implied by taxonomy strongly enough to require another way of describing what we encounter.
If a taxonomy eventually emerges, it should be the result of the study, not the structure with which we begin it.
Women appear across Ram Katha in very different circumstances, relationships and positions. Our work has already brought us close to some of them individually, leaving us with a larger question: what might become visible if we stay with women across Ram Katha without first deciding what should connect them?
This enquiry does not begin with “women” as a single interpretive category, nor with a contemporary or traditional framework through which every woman must be understood. Sita, Kaushalya, Sumitra, Kaikeyi, Manthara, Tara, Mandodari, Trijata and others need not become instances of the same argument. Their circumstances, relationships, choices, speech, silences and places within the Katha may ask for different kinds of attention.
Our commitment is to study these encounters together and see what the text permits us to notice. The study may reveal relationships or distinctions we cannot presently see; it may also question connections with which we began.
Yuddha aur Maryada emerged while we were already working within war. As Yuddha ke Drishtikon progressed, particular moments repeatedly stopped us - not because we had begun with a question about the rules or ethics of war, but because conduct became unusually visible within the circumstances of war.
Shri Rama’s response when Sugriva suddenly engages Ravana in a duel; his instructions to Matali; Vibhishana’s reluctance to perform Ravana’s last rites and Shri Rama’s response, “ममाप्येष यथा तव”; the exchange between Vibhishana and Indrajit while Lakshmana already stands ready with his arrow - these and other encounters made the enquiry difficult to leave within individual episodes.
Our question is not what constitutes a righteous war, nor do we begin with a definition of maryada against which participants or actions can be measured. Our experience with Maryadit Ram has cautioned us against taking such a standard to the text. We want instead to stay with the circumstances of war and the conduct that becomes visible within them - between enemies, allies, kin, warriors, commanders and those facing death or its consequences.
War places relationships, choices and consequences under extraordinary pressure. Whether that allows us to understand something about maryada that is less visible under ordinary circumstances is for the study to examine, not for us to presume beforehand.
Silent Keepers of Ram Katha began with a simple observation: much of Ram Katha is held not only by those who act, speak or visibly move the narrative, but also by places, rivers and people whose presence quietly holds the Katha as it passes through them.
Ayodhya, Mithila, Chitrakuta, Panchavati, Kishkindha, Lanka, Suvela and Nikumbhila are not interchangeable settings. Rivers such as Sarayu, Ganga, Godavari, Tamasa and Mandakini remain present at crossings, departures, arrivals and periods of dwelling. Alongside named central figures are Kevat, Guha, gram vasi and the citizens of Ayodhya, Mithila and Lanka.
Our questions remain elementary: When does a place, river or community first appear? What does it witness? What happens there, around it or in its presence? When the Katha moves away, what has that presence held? Even the word keeper is something the study will have to earn.
“Silent” does not necessarily mean speechless, passive or unimportant. Some speak and some act. The silence we are noticing is closer to their relative quietness in the way Ram Katha is commonly remembered: they may hold part of the Katha without becoming its centre.
We do not yet know whether Silent Keepers will remain one enquiry, whether its three present directions - Places, Rivers and People - belong together, or whether study will ask us to reorganise or abandon the category.
They are rarely seen or spoken about. Yet they seem to hold the story first. When does that holding begin, and what does it witness?
Ram Katha and Gen Z & Later asks something different from how Ram Katha can be made relevant to younger generations. The Katha has travelled across generations long before us. Our enquiry concerns the encounter between Ram Katha and generations whose ways of learning, questioning, relating, communicating and inhabiting the world may be changing rapidly.
Our work with Bacchon ke Ram has made us cautious about deciding beforehand what another generation should receive from Ram Katha. Children did not need the Katha reduced to bal geet, morality lessons or simplified teachings; they could be given space to inhabit it. A related but larger question follows: what happens if we make room for younger generations to encounter Ram Katha without predetermining the relationship they ought to have with it?
We do not want to begin by assuming that younger generations need Ram Katha explained, modernised, defended or made relevant to them, nor by diagnosing a generation and redesigning the Katha accordingly. The enquiry may require us to listen beyond the text - to younger people themselves, their questions, and the forms in which they encounter inherited traditions.
The question is therefore not only how we might speak to them, but whether we first know how to listen to them.
As generations change, how can the threshold remain open without deciding for those who enter what their relationship with Ram Katha must become?
Siblings in Ram Katha began with noticing how differently sibling relationships are lived across the Katha. Shri Rama and his brothers, Sita and her sisters, Ravana and Kumbhakarna, Jatayu and Sampati, Vali and Sugriva, Nala and Neela bring us into very different circumstances.
Some siblings remain together; others are separated. Some relationships become places of support, service or shared responsibility; others encounter disagreement, rivalry, distance or conflict. Sometimes siblinghood becomes particularly visible precisely when two siblings do not make the same choice.
Our enquiry is not an attempt to identify an ideal sibling relationship and ask which pairs conform to it. Nor do we assume that Shri Rama and his brothers provide a template through which the others should be read. Each relationship first needs to be encountered within its own circumstances.
When does the text make siblinghood visible? What does being a sibling ask of someone in that circumstance? What happens when siblings differ in judgement, desire, responsibility or action? What remains through separation, disagreement, loss or consequence?
The study need not produce a common definition of siblinghood. It is equally acceptable if careful study shows us why these relationships should not be made to say the same thing.
This enquiry grew not from an attempt to create a framework for Ram Katha, but from looking back at how we had actually been listening to it. Across episodes and series, we noticed that we were not always standing in the same relationship with the text. Different beings, moments and circumstances seemed to ask for different ways of approaching and staying with them.
Postures emerged as a vocabulary for making some of those differences visible. They are not fixed categories into which characters or episodes must be placed, nor prescribed ways in which someone ought to listen. A posture describes a place from which listening became possible for us; another listener may enter the same encounter differently.
The Listening Framework is the larger enquiry within which these postures presently sit. It asks whether the approaches emerging through our work can be described coherently enough to help us - and perhaps others - recognise different ways of inhabiting Ram Katha, without turning them into a method that stands above the text.
Names may change. Two postures may turn out to be one; one may divide into several; some may cease to be useful; new ones may emerge. We do not yet know whether what we presently call a framework will ultimately deserve that name.
Our commitment is not to build and defend a system, but to study our acts of listening carefully enough to see whether a useful vocabulary and framework genuinely emerge from them. Whatever develops must remain beneath the text rather than becoming a structure through which the text is required to pass.
Maryada Taxonomy emerged from a difficulty we encountered while working with maryada: the same word seemed to become visible through very different circumstances, relationships and forms of conduct. In Maryadit Ram, rather than beginning with a definition of maryada and asking whether someone met that standard, we found ourselves studying the circumstances first and asking what made particular conduct feel maryadit within them.
A further question follows: are there meaningful distinctions within what we are calling maryada? Maryada within love may not become visible in the same way as maryada within separation, friendship, kinship, responsibility, conflict or war. Restraint, permission, responsibility, regard for another’s position, or conduct when one possesses greater power may sometimes appear related to maryada, but we do not yet know how - or whether - they belong together.
The word taxonomy is therefore provisional. We are not proposing predetermined types of maryada or a framework against which characters and actions can be judged. If distinctions are to be made, they must arise from sustained study of textual encounters.
The enquiry may challenge its own premise. We may discover recurring forms that can usefully be distinguished, considerable overlap between them, or that the text resists the classification implied by taxonomy strongly enough to require another way of describing what we encounter.
If a taxonomy eventually emerges, it should be the result of the study, not the structure with which we begin it.
Some paths may converge.
Some may open into many.
Some may gently close.
The horizon remains open.
Listen to the text as it is.
Let questions stay as they are.
Let every being and relationship be itself.
We listen, we stay, we share what we encounter.
